


Ever a Surprise

by Atsadi



Series: Stony Exchanges [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Powers, Beauty and the Beast Elements, Declarations Of Love, Except They're Totally in a Relationship, Fluff and Humor, Halloween, Halloween Costumes, Halloween Gift Exchange, Human/Monster Romance, M/M, Mistaken for Being in a Relationship, Spells & Enchantments, Transformation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-31
Updated: 2018-10-31
Packaged: 2019-08-11 11:56:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,203
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16475108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Atsadi/pseuds/Atsadi
Summary: Tony goes to a costume party with Steve, the monster from under his bed, who’s more than he appears...





	Ever a Surprise

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for the SteveTony Halloween Exchange 2018 on Tumblr, for @[sappuppet](http://sappuppet.tumblr.com/). Her prompt was: _Both are ghosts! New, furnished apartment came with monster under bed! Inadvertently win a couple's costume contest they didn't enter, maybe they don't even know each other!_
> 
> ... As with most things, this gave me serious Beauty and the Beast feels, and I caved. It's basically a fusion of the second and third ideas, with a splash of the first! So much fun to write.
> 
> Massive thanks to @[fourth-of-foxes](http://fourth-of-foxes.tumblr.com/) ([GreyMoth](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GreyMoth/pseuds/GreyMoth)), who helped enormously with the writing and editing of this thing. She's a star.
> 
> I hope you enjoy it, sappuppet!

“I really don’t know about this, Tony,” Steve muttered.

Tony pulled a little harder on his arm. “It’ll be fine. No, it’ll be _great_.”

“It just doesn’t seem like such a good idea.”

“Steve, when will you learn that all my ideas are good ones? Ask anyone!” He paused, relaxing his grip on Steve’s arm ever so slightly. “Except Rhodey. Don’t ask Rhodey. Actually, I’m not sure I ever want you talking to Rhodey, he knows too—”

“Tony!” Steve interrupted, urgently. _Rude_. “You said there’s going to be a lot of people at this party. What if—?”

Tony interrupted him right back. “It’s Halloween, Steven!” He made a woo-woo-wiggly-fingers motion with the hand that wasn’t wrapped around Steve’s wrist. “Their first thought isn’t gonna be, ‘oh shit, look at that scary monster!’ It’s gonna be, ‘oh shit, look at that badass monster!’ They’re going to think you have the best damn costume they’ve ever seen!”

Steve did not look convinced. “Are you s—?”

“Sure sure sure sure sure,” Tony rattled off, digging his fingers into the thick brown fur on Steve’s arm and giving him another tug. “Let’s go, already!”

Some way, somehow, Tony got them moving out of the bedroom and into the main room of his fancy condo. Possibly Tony had won Steve over with his superior debating skills, or possibly Steve was just tired of having his fur yanked on. Tony wasn’t questioning it. He released Steve for the moment and sped over to check himself in the hall mirror.

Worryingly white foundation, check. Froofy ponytail wig, check. Ostentatious gold-glitter jacket, check. Pointy stick-on fangs—he pulled them from his breast pocket and quickly squished them in place using the putty they came with—, check. He grinned at his reflection, partly from excitement and partly to test the hold of his new teeth. Good enough. With a little twist he checked out how his butt looked in the tight cream-coloured pants and nodded approvingly.

Satisfied, Tony swung around to pose with his chin up and his hands on his hips. “How do I look?”

With a dubious squint, Steve looked him up and down. “Fancy vampire?”

Tony sighed despairingly. “An Leshdad. You know, fum _Interfew Wiff a Fampar _?”__

Steve stared blankly at him for a few seconds, then cracked a grin. Okay, so Tony was almost incomprehensible with the teeth in, whatever, it made Steve smile. (Now _those_ were some impressive fangs.) He rolled his eyes and removed the vampire teeth for now, sequestering them back in his wine-red waistcoat. “You be quiet. Get your cape and let’s get out of here before we’re late.”

“I thought you wanted to be late?”

“Fashionably late, Steve. Now stop stalling and get your cape.”

Steve obeyed, if somewhat mulishly. He swept up the cape Tony had ordered him from where it lay on the kitchen counter, shook it out, and fastened the clasp around his neck.

Very dashing, if Tony did say so himself. The cape was navy, made of some sort of cheap, scratchy fabric that Steve promised he couldn’t feel through his fur. It swept from his shoulders to his knees, ending at about the level of the khaki pants Tony had stolen from Rhodey after Steve kicked up a fuss about _going out in public without any pants on, Tony, are you nuts??_. Tony had pointed out that it wasn’t like you could see Steve’s… bits, what with the thick coating of hair, but Steve would not be swayed. Tony had managed to prevent him from wearing a shirt, not least because carding his fingers over Steve’s magnificently tufted chest was one of Tony’s new favorite anxiety-reducers.

All in all, Steve looked like the perfect scary monster. Now if only he could get said monster moving.

  


* * *

  


A few minutes later, Tony had in fact managed to leave the condo with monster reluctantly in tow. Granted, Steve was being extra shifty and trying to Pink-Panther his way out of the building, plastering his back against the walls and peering around corners. Tony beamed at him while he strode on down the hall and into the elevator, then from the elevator to the front door. They miraculously didn’t run into anybody until they were already out of the building, which was convenient, because Tony was pretty sure Steve would have done an immediate 180 otherwise.

And then they were off, out in the open, and—it being Halloween, and all—the streets were positively crawling with people. Tony’s apartment block was part of a larger complex not far from campus, but most of the area was residential housing. Meaning they were surrounded by a healthy mix of bouncing children, trudging adults, and over-eager college students zipping from house to house in search of treats.

Tony glanced up at Steve, who was wide-eyed and would probably be as white as Tony’s makeup if his face weren’t covered in chestnut fur.

“You okay, Steve?” he asked carefully. A moment later, Steve gave him a nod. After quickly glancing around to see if anyone was watching, Tony leaned in to say, quietly, “How long has it been since you’ve gone outside?” 

Steve shivered a little, and Tony could see his dog-like nose twitch slightly as he sifted the scents in the air. His eyes were closed, his mouth soft, and Tony wondered abruptly if he should offer him a hug.

“Long time,” Steve answered eventually, his voice thick. “A really long time.”

  


* * *

  


They’d met the night Tony moved into the condo. His dad had bought it for him, big surprise, claiming that the building had way better security than any of the ones on campus. Tony was pretty sure the old man had just cringed at the idea of his son and heir slumming it with the other kids in the spartan dorms, but whatever.

The place hadn’t been as dusty as Tony expected, which was his first clue; but of course he hadn’t really registered that at the time. It had belonged to some ageing socialite, or her daughter, or possibly her granddaughter, Tony hadn’t cared enough to ask. Whatever the case, it hadn’t actually been lived in for months. Possibly years.

Even so, when Tony crawled into bed that first night, well and truly exhausted from the all-night engineering binge and cross-country move, he had not expected the mattress to barely give at all under his weight. Or for it to make a sound weirdly like a startled exhale. Shouldn’t a place like this have the plushest furnishings money can buy?

Offended by the rock-like surface he was apparently supposed to sleep on for the next four years, Tony resigned himself to sleeping on the couch until a new mattress could arrive. It would be worth it if he could actually get a good night’s sleep. He flung himself up and bounced on the bed a few times to see if he could break it in a bit, and maybe a little bit out of spite for its betrayal.

This time, the mattress gave out a sound more like a pained gasp.

Tony had gaped down at it for a good twenty seconds, then leaped off and flopped to the floorboards on his belly to peek underneath. He hadn’t turned on the lights and couldn’t see much, just what looked like a big fuzzy blanket all rolled up and stuffed beneath the bedframe. He stared for a few seconds longer…

… and then the blanket _sneezed_.

Tony shrieked, dignity be damned, scrambled up to his feet, and sprinted out of the bedroom, slamming the door behind him for good measure. 

“You have ten seconds to get out from under my bed and come out with your hands up, or I’m calling the cops,” he yelled through the safely closed door, willing his voice not to shake.

There was a sudden racket from inside the room: a great squeaking of the bedframe and some scraping sounds, then two loud _bangs_ followed by a muffled but heartfelt _“ouch.”_ Tony cracked the door back open with wide eyes, desperately curious about the clumsiest home invader he’d ever encountered—and froze when an enormous shape started to rise from where it had been laying on the floor.

He must have made a noise (hopefully a manly gasp, but more likely a childish squeak), because the figure cringed and paused half-way up onto its feet, putting its hands in the air as if in surrender.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” it claimed in a gravelly voice.

Tony’s mouth opened and closed a few times before he tried to speak, but just managed a strangled noise as his brain rebooted. “Were you under my bed this whole time??”

The figure flinched, but didn’t turn around. “I… yes, but it’s not what it looks like.”

“Honestly I don’t even know what this looks like, whatever the hell _this_ is. Never mind what’s actually going on,” Tony admitted, considering turning on the lights but not sure it would help the situation.

“I live here!” the figure blurted.

Tony scowled. “That’s a problem. I live here. My dad owns this condo. So try again.”

“Your dad?” the figure asked, sounding startled. “Who’s your dad?”

“... Not telling.” If this creeper didn’t know he had snuck into Howard Stark’s son’s house, Tony sure as hell wasn’t going to be the one enlightening him.

“What about Peggy?” the guy—it sounded like a guy, anyway, albeit one who gargles sand before bed every night—asked, sounding kind of lost.

“Uh, don’t know about a Peggy,” Tony said, his scowl morphing into a frown. “But my dad bought the place from Sharon Carter? I think she inherited it from her aunt, or grandma or something.”

“Oh,” the guy said tightly. “Oh.”

There was a long silence. Tony stood awkwardly with just his face poking into the bedroom, squinting and considering his options. The guy seemed genuinely distressed, so maybe he really didn’t know the condo had changed owners. This might actually be an honest mistake. Except…

“So, uh, why were you under my bed?”

“I, uh...” Oh god, it sounded like the guy was about to cry. Did Tony make the home invader cry?? “I panicked, uh, when you opened the front door. I tried to hide in the closet but, um, I realized you might be putting things in there. So, uh…”

“You were hiding under the bed?” Tony asked in disbelief. “Hiding _from me_?”

“No,” the guy said, in a voice that implied it was actually an embarrassed ‘yes’.

Tony laughed, then cleared his throat. Probably bad to laugh at the—absolutely enormous—guy trespassing in your house.

“Okay,” he said. “How about you come out into the main room and we talk?”

“I’m not really sure—”

“That wasn’t a request,” Tony said firmly. He turned around and flipped on the overhead lights, then walked into the middle of the main room and stood with his arms folded, tapping his foot loudly. “Out you come, Colossus.”

There was more rustling and shifting audible through the door, and then the guy walked forward with heavy steps.

“Don’t, uh,” he said awkwardly. “Don’t be afraid. Please.”

Tony didn’t have a moment to retort before the door opened and the guy stepped out into the light. He was tall. Taller than Tony had originally suspected, towering at least a head over him and built like a linebacker. But more importantly, he was _covered from head to toe in fur_. 

What Tony had thought was a fuzzy blanket when he glimpsed it under his bed was actually acres of shaggy _fur_ , a rich brown color at the roots but lighter, more golden at the ends of the hairs and on the guy’s extremities. Tony’s gaze dropped from his hairy face to his hairy hands, still raised in surrender, and then his hairy feet—all of his digits tipped with great big black claws—, then back up to the horns protruding from his temples and twisting back over his skull. 

He gaped. “I… I have no words. What the _hell_?”

The guy… monster? Beast? He shuffled nervously and Tony kept staring in disbelief. Then the beast-man peered up at him with startlingly blue eyes and asked: “Are you scared?”

Actually, Tony was more shocked than anything. “Uh, is it bad if I was more scared when I thought you were just some random creep who broke into my apartment?”

The beast snorted at him, then looked surprised at himself. “Yeah, I think that’s probably bad.”

“Yeah,” Tony agreed. “Well, okay. Uh. I’m Tony.”

“... I’m Steve.”

Tony looked longsufferingly up at the ceiling. “Of course your name is Steve. Why wouldn’t the monster under my bed be called Steve?”

‘Steve’ huffed and drew himself up. “I’m not a monster.”

It was too late for this. Or early for this. Maybe this was all a vivid, exhaustion-provoked hallucination. Wouldn’t be his first. Although the subject matter was certainly novel: apparently Tony had _offended_ the monster under his bed, whose name was Steve. If this wasn’t real, he sure was interested in what part of his subconscious this reel of nonsense had come from.

Tony held up a dismissive hand. “Monster, beasty, Wolfman, whatever. I don’t care. Do you want some coffee?”

Beast-Steve stared at him incredulously, which was probably justified, then nodded slowly.

“Rad. Okay. Coffee.” Tony whipped around and made his way over to the kitchen half of the room. A nice coffee for the toothy beast. Why not? “I swear by molten black coffee, as nature intended, but I recognize that some people aren’t so enlightened. So do you want milk in yours?”

  


* * *

  


For a guy who had (from what Tony had been able to glean) been cooped up inside that building for at least few years, _years_ , Steve got over the shock of being outside pretty quickly.

But then he seemed to notice all at once how many people were about.

Before he could start to panic again, Tony companionably shoved his shoulder against Steve’s side. This caused him to let out a little “oof” and glare down at him, but Tony shrugged unapologetically. “No time like the present, Steve-o,” he asserted, reapplying his fangs before grabbing Steve’s elbow and using his surprise to drag him down the couple of steps outside the building.

For all his bravado, Tony wasn’t absolutely sure that nobody would kick up a fuss over Steve, but he was a hell of a lot better at hiding his nerves about it. He was just about to make a joke about a nearby group of kids all dressed up as _Star Wars_ characters—they seemed to be missing a Chewbacca, and maybe Steve wanted to volunteer?—when there was a child’s shriek from off to the right.

“Mommy!” the little brat screamed. “A monster!”

Tony had a moment to think, “Oh shit,” and Steve a moment to tense up as if to flee, before the child’s mother turned and saw them—and smiled blandly.

“Oh my gosh,” she said in a playful voice. “That _is_ a scary monster.” Then she winked at Steve, who clearly had no idea how to react, and returned to tapping on her phone.

Her daughter, dressed in a surprisingly good Moana costume, continued to stare suspiciously at Steve for a few seconds before turning to give Tony the stink-eye. He grinned toothily down at her. Soon enough she apparently decided to accept that Steve was a monster for Halloween just like Tony was a vampire, and whirled around to skip towards the next house.

“Oh my god,” Steve said in a strangled whisper.

Tony swallowed his own heart-pounding panic, peeled off his fangs, and flashed him a roguish grin. “Told you so.”

Steve scowled at him, not buying his bullshit. But Tony retook his elbow before he could complain and started marching them down the street in the general direction of the address Jan had texted him.

The same sort of encounter happened several times along their way. By the end of it, Steve had relaxed enough to show off his enormous fangs along with Tony’s rather more teeny-tiny ones, which made most of the kids either scream with pleasure or gasp in awe. The adults, amazingly, didn’t seem to entertain the idea that Steve was an actual monster for even a second. Steve even took a selfie with a group of freshman girls from the nearby college, although admittedly he didn’t look thrilled about it.

Tony wasn’t particularly thrilled over having his date co-opted either, and told them so as he tugged on Steve’s cape to make him follow.

“Your date?” Steve asked him, bemused, as the girls giggled behind them and continued to drag random passers-by into their selfie trap, like modern-day sirens.

“You and me,” Tony affirmed, pointing between them. “Dressed up, heading for a party together. Hell, we live together, don’t we?”

Steve grumbled a little, arguing that “it isn’t like that, Tony,” which it was, it totally was. Because they had long since taken to sleeping in the same bed (after Tony had reinforced it for Steve’s massive bulk), and it turned out that Steve made an _amazing_ body pillow. They ate, played, and worked out together (Steve had claimed that Tony was ‘scrawny’ which, true, but rude). When Tony was home from class they sat around in amicable company while he worked, and Steve occupied himself with things like drawing and painting, neither of which were as hampered by the claws as Tony would have expected. Hell, they spent most evenings messing around on Tony’s laptop or watching movies together, and most weekends taking on increasingly ambitious home improvement projects, and generally, you know, _lived together_.

Sure there were long looks and awkward silences, but also venting and arguments and make-up hugs, surprise dinners and gifts, impromptu snuggling while watching movies, and all those things that—in Tony’s admittedly lacking experience—smacked of couple-dom.

The only thing they hadn’t done was kiss, and not for a lack of trying on Tony’s part. So sue him; Steve might not be human (although he sure got shifty about the topic when Tony brought it up, so who knows?) but he was incredibly smart, snarky, and sweet. He was suave sometimes and utterly hopeless at others, and generally very much Tony’s Type™. At this point, he was moving swiftly past concerns about the whole fur-fangs-horns thing, and getting well into ‘love is blind’ territory.

Which was new, and a bit alarming. Who’d have thought?

  


* * *

  


They arrived at the party to very little fanfare. What few college kids weren’t utterly hammered by this late hour were well and truly in the Halloween spirit and made no comments to Steve that weren’t compliments on his “sick fangs, bro.”

“Tony!” Jan screamed from the front room, over the music, sitting on the shoulders of a huge guy Tony didn’t recognize through his Batman costume.

“Janet!” he yelled back, miming a high-five across the room. She returned it sloppily, and he laughed at the look on her face when she accidentally slapped her ride on the bat-ear and knocked the mask askew.

“Want a drink?” Tony asked Steve, going onto tiptoe and leaning in so close that his lips brushed the fur around Steve’s deer-like ear. To Tony’s delight, the ear flickered in response and Steve himself shivered slightly.

“Uh, no?” Steve said, voice wavering a little. “I mean, that’s probably not the best idea.”

“Suit yourself,” Tony shrugged. “Hey, wait, I want to introduce you to Jan. Bend over.”

“Tony, that is—”

“Don’t be a pervert, Steve,” Tony reprimanded, as though he hadn’t totally done that on purpose. “Just do it.” He drummed his hands in an obnoxious rhythm on Steve’s shoulders until he caved, at which point Tony clambered up gracelessly onto his back. He wrapped his legs around Steve’s waist, feeling his enormous forearm snake back to support his weight, then curled one arm around Steve’s neck and threw the other in the air, pointing in Jan’s general direction. “Onwards!”

Steve huffed but gamely pushed his way through the crowd of drunken, tipsy, or sugar-manic twenty-somethings while Tony attempted to sing along to the pounding music in the most terribly off-key voice he could manage.

“I hate you,” Steve grumbled just loud enough that Tony could hear him.

“Love you too, candy floss,” Tony replied, grinning triumphantly.

“Tony!” Jan shouted again when they were closer, eyes widening when she saw Steve. “Oh my god, who’s your ride?”

Steve made a garbled noise of protest while Tony beamed and ruffled the wavy golden fur on top of his head. “This is Steve, my boyfriend.”

“I’m not his boyfriend,” Steve said sulkily, but Jan clearly didn’t hear him.

“Nice to meet you!” she yelled, smiling widely. “Amazing costumes!”

“Thanks!” Tony replied, giving her two thumbs up, then pushed himself up on Steve’s back to bend over his head and grin at him upside-down. “See? Everyone loves your costume!”

It was at that point that the Batman upon which Jan was perched clearly had enough of their conversation and ambled off without so much as a goodbye, carrying Jan away with him.

“Stick around for the prizes!” Jan commanded in parting, giving them both an exaggerated wink.

“Prizes?” Steve asked, wriggling as if he wanted Tony to get down.

“Costume contest, of course,” Tony informed him, holding on even tighter to Steve’s waist and neck like a demented sloth. “You’ll definitely win Best Monster.”

“Great,” Steve replied, decidedly unenthused but surrendering himself to being Tony’s ride for the foreseeable future.

Tony grinned, burying his face in the long hair on the back of Steve’s head. “Don’t be like that, Beast Mode. You’ll always be my favorite monster.”

The rumble of satisfaction he felt in Steve’s chest made the burning in his (scrawny) thighs worth it.

  


* * *

  


“Listen up, everyone!” Jan called, her voice carrying through the house even before someone turned down the music.

By this point, Tony had gone from sober to tipsy to almost-sober again, and most of the room was somewhere along that scale. They all congregated in the living room, filling it to capacity and spilling out into the kitchen and hall. Jan stood tall on one of the armchairs at the edge of the room, one foot on each of its arms and holding an enormous bag of candy on her hip.

Steve had claimed another armchair for his own about an hour earlier, and Tony was pretty sure he’d been napping in the damn thing, the party pooper. Tony, for his part, had been making the rounds with people he knew, people he knew of, and people he didn’t know at all—though he was always aware of where Steve was, and kind of wishing he was where Steve was.

Jan’s pronouncement gave him an excuse to make a beeline through the kitchen, back into the living room, and into Steve’s lap.

“Tony,” Steve growled, wriggling around a bit until Tony was better settled.

“Did you miss me?” Tony demanded, seated on one of Steve’s thighs and balancing an elbow on his shoulder. His fingers were in the perfect position to stroke softly through the fur of Steve’s neck.

Steve sighed in response, but he did tilt his head into the petting, almost nuzzling his hand, so Tony didn’t take him too seriously.

“Time for prizes!” Jan was saying, to an eruption of cheers. “And then you have to go home because I have an 8AM class tomorrow. So!”

She held the bag of candy aloft. “For funniest costume… Nat, as Nat-in-a-Halloween-costume!”

The redheaded menace gave Jan a little smirk, effortlessly snatching her Three Musketeers out of the air. Half the room cheered while the other half booed—Tony, for one, had already complimented Nat on her “This is my Halloween costume” t-shirt, and was snickering into the top of Steve’s head.

“Shh! Okay!” Jan chirruped, waving around a Milky Way. “For most accurate costume… Shuri, as a kinda scary-functional Inspector Gadget!”

Shuri cheered for herself along with everyone else, and managed to catch her candy bar using a gripper-arm-thing that extended from the sleeve of her trench coat and scared the hell out of several people standing near her.

“And for most unoriginal costume… Thor, as the god Thor!”

There was a chorus of boos as Thor the Icelandic football player pumped his fist in the air and caught his candy bar one-handed. 

It went on this way for a little while, and Tony gamely hooted and hollered as his friends and acquaintances received their due recognition. He really perked up when Jan announced the award for best monster—

—only to slump back onto Steve’s shoulder when she called out Scott’s name for his admittedly amazing Mike Wazowski costume. It was basically a stuffed Swiss ball spray-painted green and cut open for his head and limbs, but something about the way it made Scott waddle around and bounce off of furniture had had people in stitches for hours.

It was a good monster costume, but there was no way it was better than Steve’s! Well, if you thought he was wearing a costume, anyway. Steve was _actually_ a monster, for crying out loud! How much more could you want?!

Or did Jan know he wasn’t really…?

Nah. No need to be that paranoid. Tony settled for pouting just a little and kicking disconsolately at Steve’s shin until Steve flicked him and glared. 

“Okay, now for best group costume!”

A few muted whoops sounded, while Tony just sighed and relaxed into Steve’s chest a little more. He didn’t have an 8AM lecture like Jan (was she nuts?), but he did have a first draft of his mechatronics project due at the end of the week, and he wasn’t even close to happy with it yet. It was barely past midnight but he’d still be okay with leaving once the prizes were all doled out.

Even as he thought that maybe he should hit the hay instead of the workbench when they got home, a great yawn wrenched its way out of his mouth.

Steve noticed, of course, and peered disapprovingly at him. “You haven’t been sleeping this week,” he said, in that voice that made Tony’s insides go all wriggly.

Suppressing his sudden desire to act even brattier than usual to incite further use of That Voice, Tony flapped his hand dismissively at Steve. “Science doesn’t sleep, Cookie Monster.”

Oh, Steve didn’t like that at all. His chest rumbled with a displeased growl and his hands clamped around Tony’s waist. “We should go.”

“Nooo, come on, we can’t go now,” Tony retorted, ignoring the fact that he’d just been thinking more or less the same thing.

Unfortunately for Tony’s dignity—if, probably, fortunate for his grades—, Steve chose to utterly reject Tony’s very logical point that he didn’t _want_ to go yet. Instead he stood up and started to make his way around the edges of the crowd, Tony cradled in his arms like a simpering heroine. Well, a simpering heroine who was wiggling and twisting and hissing for their freedom, anyway.

“Steve!” he barked in his ear. “Steve! Steven! Thteeeev!” he lisped, desperately trying not to laugh and wondering if he was a lot drunker than he’d thought, or if he was just a little punch-drunk on being manhandled by the guy he was half in love with.

They were almost to the door that lead into the hall when the hollering over the winners of the group costume started to wane, and Jan’s voice could be heard calling out: “And finally, the prize for best couple’s costume goes to… Tony and Steve as Ghost Beauty and the Beast!”

… Wait, what?

The room erupted once again in cheers, and everyone followed Jan’s pointing finger to look at where Steve and Tony were frozen in the midst of their escape.

Startled and befuddled, Tony glanced down at his costume, having already forgotten what he was wearing. And okay, without the fangs, which had fallen into his drink quite some time ago and been abandoned to their fate… he maybe looked a little like a gender-bent ghost-Belle. Maybe. A little. What with the brown ponytail and pasty-white makeup and gold pseudo-Regency getup. And, uh, especially considering his companion for the evening.

Tony recovered from his surprise first, grinning for the whooping crowd and holding out two hands to catch the chocolates Jan threw their way. He caught one without a fuss, but the other smacked Steve right on the nose—although Steve already kind of looked like he’d taken a frying pan to the face, and the little projectile actually seemed to snap him out of it.

He tightened his grip on Tony—ow—and tensed up like he was about to flee mysteriously into the night.

“Thank you, Jan!” Tony shouted, waving his hand with a flourish. “Now we must bid you adieu. I’m afraid my beast is the shy kind!”

That got a laugh from the assembled partygoers, and it also made it less weird that Steve suddenly turned and almost ran from the room with Tony clutched to his chest. It wasn’t until they were outside the house and around the corner that Steve seemed to realize he still had a passenger trapped in his vice grip, and he set Tony rather abruptly down on the ground.

“I can’t believe you talked me into this,” Steve said, dazed. “Now I know how Bucky always felt.”

Tony knew better than to comment on that, as he’d already learned that the topic of Steve’s absent best friend was to be left alone as much as humanly possible. With a veritable petting zoo of triggers and anxieties of his own, Tony readily let Steve have his privacy there.

“Yeah, wasn’t expecting to be outed as a monster-f—lover in front of half of my class,” Tony joked. Judging by Steve’s wince, it maybe wasn’t as funny as he’d hoped.

“We aren’t actually a couple, Tony,” Steve reminded him morosely, stomping away towards home.

“We kind of actually are a couple, Steve,” Tony retorted, jogging a little to catch up.

If anything, that seemed to make Steve sink even lower. Tony narrowed his eyes at him, curious and a little hurt, and maybe even a little unaccountably guilty. He certainly hadn’t heard any complaints from Steve about their apparent domestic bliss. Not until now. Was he having some sort of gay monster midlife crisis?

Or… did he feel trapped living with Tony? It wasn’t like he had much of a choice, did he? The thought had occurred to Tony before, but he’d always managed to chase it away when Steve would smile at him, or start another food fight, or let Tony gently scrub paint out of his fur. What if Steve was desperate to leave, but he just couldn’t? He literally couldn’t go outside without putting himself in danger, and Tony had been completely oblivious because he _liked_ Steve and didn’t _want_ him to leave?

And tonight would have been the perfect night to escape—Tony himself had pointed out that if a big, shaggy, horned monster wanted to go out in public on any night of the year, Halloween would be the time. But instead of seeing if Steve wanted to take the chance to get out of the building he’d been trapped in for who-knows-how-long, maybe even get out of the city and go somewhere where he wouldn’t have to live in terror of being discovered…

No, instead of helping Steve escape, Tony had dragged him to a stupid party filled with people he barely knew, all of them complete strangers to Steve. And Steve hadn’t even had fun; he’d just sat in his armchair, probably thinking about all the things he could be doing instead—

“Steve,” he choked out.

Steve turned to him, his face dismal. “Yeah?”

“We still have time. For you to leave, I mean. It’s still Halloween, right? People will still think you’re in costume. You can go. You can go anywhere you want. I’ll buy you a ticket, uh, cab’s probably not the best idea. I, uh, I don’t have a car but the bus is okay, you know, it’s one of those weird places where people just don’t give a shit, you can show up all… you. And it’ll be fine. It’ll be fine. You can go. Wherever you want. I can give you money. I’ll give you whatever you need, okay? You don’t have to worry. You don’t have to stay here if you don’t want to. You don’t have to—”

Steve cut him off by wheeling around and putting his hands on his shoulders. It was a good thing, too, because Tony was about five words away from bursting into tears. He took a moment to collect himself and try to scrub the embarrassing emotion from his face.

“What I mean is,” he continued, managing to meet and hold Steve’s eye while ignoring his wavering voice. “You don’t have to stay in the condo if you don’t want to. You, uh, you have options, okay?”

“Don’t you want me to stay?” Steve asked, his voice and face inscrutable.

“Yeah, but you don’t _have_ to,” Tony repeated, wondering why Steve didn’t seem to be getting it. He was giving him an out! Why wasn’t he taking it?

“Tony, I want to stay.”

… Oh. What, really? Tony’s mouth dropped open before he snapped it shut. His eyes went so wide they stung a little, flying over Steve’s face in search of any sign of a lie.

Steve was looking at him weirdly, but maybe this time it was a little… warm? Maybe Tony was just reading too much into it.

“If I didn’t want to stay with you, Tony, I would have left,” Steve said firmly. “You think I’ve just been tolerating you all these months, waiting for the chance to run away?”

“Well, yeah,” Tony forced out. “I mean, I moved into your house. You… you might have been in danger if you left. I didn’t give you a choice, I—”

“It was my choice to stay, Tony. Whatever you’ve cooked up in that head of yours, it isn’t true. I stayed with you because I wanted to.” Steve’s eyes were shining, whether from honesty or unshed tears Tony wasn’t really sure.

“Oh. You—wow, really?”

Steve rolled his eyes a little, and gave Tony a bit of a shake with the huge hands still gripping his shoulders. “Yes, you idiot genius.”

Tony’s eyes were probably a little misty too by that point. Fortunately, nobody was around to see: it was late enough that all the kids were home already, and the foot traffic was down to almost nil. Besides, they’d cut through a big alley between streets, which Tony would only ever do at nighttime with a literal giant monster accompanying him.

There were no witnesses to judge him for plunging his face forward into Steve’s furred chest, or for bringing his hands up under Steve’s cape to wrap around his back. Of course, Steve was so big around that Tony’s hands didn’t even come close to meeting in the middle, but that was okay. He was warm and fluffy, he smelled safe and familiar, and his heart beat in a solid, comforting drum against Tony’s cheek. Steve’s hands slipped down to hug Tony back, and it was great. So great.

“I love you,” Tony whispered, pretty confident that Steve wouldn’t hear him even with his super-beast hearing, what with Tony’s face being crushed against his chest and all.

But Steve went rigid in his arms as soon as he said it, which was—ah, probably not good.

Oh shit, if it was awkward before, there was no way this wasn’t going to make things absolutely unbearable between them. No no no, how could he be so stupid? Tony tensed up too, his heart starting to pound. He made the executive and not-at-all-cowardly decision not to remove his face from where it was hidden in Steve’s fur. Denial, yep, denial was definitely the way to go. 

“What did you—?” Steve started, his voice strained, but didn’t get to finish.

There was a horrible keening noise in Tony’s ears all of a sudden, like one of the street lights out on the road was about to blow. It was so loud Tony swore he could not only hear it but also _see_ it like a blinding light. The noise kept getting louder and louder, until there was no way it was just some electrical malfunction. Tony was half-paralyzed by the sound, and half by his own bewilderment. There was a buzzing in the air, across his scalp and his skin, like he’d skidded across a carpet and then shocked himself on a metal rail.

And then it was gone, the sound vanishing as quickly as it came. Everything just stopped. The feeling like all his senses were full of radio static disappeared in an instant and left his ears ringing in the silence. His skin thrummed and he blinked his eyes frantically.

“What the… hell was that?” he gasped.

“Uh, Tony?” Steve said from above him.

Only it didn’t sound like Steve. Steve had a delightfully rumbly voice, the sound vibrating through his barrel chest and coming out all gravelly and delicious. This voice sounded kind of like Steve, if Steve had taken honey in his tea or was just a bit smaller…

Steve was definitely smaller. Tony was still wrapped around him like a petrified koala, except now his hands were clasped together behind Steve’s back. Also, come to think of it, his head was no longer on Steve’s chest, but seemed to be tucked up under his chin.

With a strangled yelp, Tony jumped away from whatever he was now hugging—Steve or otherwise—and raised both hands in front of himself defensively.

It was not Steve. Someone was standing where Steve had been standing, sure. And Tony had been wrapped around him like he’d been wrapped around Steve. But this man was considerably less toothy and… floofy.

Oh, and also he was a _man_. A human man.

Tony gaped at the guy who was standing in front of him with his arms also raised. Only instead of looking aggressive, he looked like he was trying to placate Tony.

“Tony,” the guy repeated, sounding a little more urgent.

He was taller than Tony, but not as tall as Steve. Nor was he built like a linebacker, but more like a quarterback with incredibly wide shoulders and a ridiculously narrow waist. He was white, and blond, and light-eyed, although it was just dark enough that Tony couldn’t make out the exact coloring.

“Tony,” the guy said yet again, turning his hands so that his palms faced upwards and spread out slightly. “Don’t freak out. It’s me. It’s Steve, I’m Steve, I swear.”

He was wearing khaki pants that were just a little too short for him, no shoes, and a big blue cape that swept down almost to the tarmac. 

Steve’s costume. He was wearing Steve’s costume, and he was standing where Steve had been, and he was claiming to be Steve. There was still no damn way this was his Steve.

“What?!” Tony finally managed to yell. “Just— _what_?! You’re Steve? Is this normal for you? With the face and the abs and the—” He gestured frantically at Steve’s entire body.

“Yes, uh, this is normal for me,” Steve affirmed, sounding like he was talking to a startled cat. “I can explain, really. I can explain, although I know you hate magic so you probably aren’t going to like it. But please, uh, can I?”

Tony blinked as his brain raced in five directions at once. The easiest bit to process was that his own hands were still up as if he were ready to fight his way out of this, which would only end in tears. His tears. With a jolt he brought his arms in to fold them over his chest.

“You want me to believe that you’re Steve,” he demanded, pointing at the guy with an accusatory finger. “The giant poofy monster who I found under my bed and who makes me drink disgusting green protein shakes after forcing me to do a workout every day? That Steve?”

“I wasn’t _poofy_ ,” the guy grumbled, but he looked like he was cracking a grin. “But, yeah, kind of. Tony, I’m not really sure how to ask this without sounding like a dick, but… did you say you loved me?”

Tony’s eyes narrowed. “Okay, I might, maybe, even conceivably believe that you are my Steve given some time to process and a great big pile of evidence, but if you want me to accept that you were under some kind of spell that has been broken because I said the words ‘I love you,’ I’ve got some bad news for you, champ.”

Now the guy was definitely grinning. “Actually, the spell would only be broken if someone told me they loved me and _meant it_.”

“Okay, you see,” Tony snapped. “That is exactly the kind of bullshit that I’m telling you not to try on me. I am an engineer, not a magician. If you’re trying to—”

He was cut off by the guy reaching across the short space between them and taking both of Tony’s hands. Or, well, he took the hand that Tony was using to point crossly at him and then had to dig into Tony’s armpit to grab his other hand. Ordinarily Tony would probably have objected to this manhandling, but for some completely illogical and ridiculous reason, maybe _hope_ , he was actually beginning to believe that the guy was telling the truth.

Once he had captured both of Tony’s hands in his own, the guy pressed them against his chest in a sweet gesture that would have melted Tony in most other contexts. He sought out Tony’s gaze earnestly, then smiled at him once he had it.

“Tony, I love you too. It really is me, and I’ll prove it to you.”

Tony stared suspiciously up at the guy, at his blue eyes, and damn it all. Those blue eyes were ones he absolutely recognized.

“Steve?” he asked, incredulously.

The way those blue eyes crinkled at the corners was one Tony was perfectly familiar with, and he exhaled in a rush of forgotten fear and delight. 

“Oh my god,” Tony said in a quiet voice, then repeated, much louder, “Oh my god! How dare you be magical around me? Around DUM-E, no less! You brought magic into my den of science, you heathen!”

The guy he loved—Steve, his Steve—was grinning wider and wider.

“No wonder you’ve been so weird all this time! How did you know this Peggy? How long have you been a monster and why the hell—how the hell did that happen? No, wait, you’re back to your normal self and we don’t have to worry about that whole monster thing anymore so does this mean you’ll finally kiss m—mpfff!”

  


* * *

###  _The End._


End file.
